


emollient

by thegoldenapple



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, POV Patroclus, nothing happens it's just gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27097735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoldenapple/pseuds/thegoldenapple
Summary: emollient (n) : something that softens or soothes. Patroclus and his feelings and his best friend Achilles.(short blurbs between canon scenes on Pelion. Very self-indulgent.)
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus (Song of Achilles)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 83





	emollient

**Author's Note:**

> I speedwrote this for fun after reading this book again out of boredom, and now weeks later I can't think of anything else since that new game Hades came out with Patrochilles in it and made me feel gay things again. I may or may not update this in the future with an Achilles POV, but that'll come after I figure out exactly how to write from Achilles POV lol. But for now, I'm sick of looking at it, so up it goes
> 
> It's been a very long time since I've written anything outside of academic work, so forgive me if it's a bit awkward.
> 
> Begins right after the "you look older" scene in Chapter 10, but it can be read without context. It really makes no difference.

We wrestled, and it did not take long for him to have me pinned against the dirt. It never did. But I was not mad. His forearms pressed into my chest and wrist at an unintrusive angle, and his eyes glittered greener than the high sunlit canopy behind him. I could not pretend I was not grateful for the chance to feel his skin on mine. In that moment all I knew was him—his smell, his eyes, the triumphant gleam of his face and his reckless grin, sharp and bright from his victory. The way the whole earth was warm even though spring had barely come. It was all I could do not to melt into him and be absorbed by his beauty. I watched him lean closer, his eyes flashing, till his nose was pressed against mine.

“Patroclus,” he said. Just like that, I was myself again. “Count for me.”

“For what?” I said.

Achilles sat up on his knees and pointed to somewhere above us, and I looked to distract myself from the sudden absence of warmth. In the very highest boughs, there was a coloring that suggested fruit; he wished to climb to it and bring it down for us, and he wished to test himself as he always did.

“All right,” I said, sitting up. His joy was ripping and infectious as he ran to the foot of the tree.

“Start counting!” he called. I stood to keep track of him as he climbed, tapping lightly against my arm.

He was quickly gone, and just the slightest bit slower back. “Fifteen,” I reported when he returned to me, gleaming. He offered me a fruit from his small armful and admired its plump shape. Fruit of the gods, Chiron had called them when we’d picked its lower-hanging fruit earlier. It was a strange tree that fruited so early on. They were small and tart but the juice ran down our chins when we bit into them, and Achilles was pleased.

We finished, and we lolled in the new spring sun for some time. Winter had been long again this year and Achilles was glad to be out and about. He stretched his legs out before us, flexing the toes he had not used as freely in many months. The smell of his oils, sandalwood, touched me briefly, and for the first time in a while I thought of the castle, the sand and white beaches that chafed the bottoms of his unmarred pink soles.

The shores of Phthia seemed so far from us now, I mused. _Do you miss the palace? I thought I might, but I don’t._ I was surprised he did not mention it before. But he had always been the type to look ahead; it was always I who was stuck in the past, lost in my own shortcomings. I finished licking the juice from my fingers and palms where it had dripped and turned to speak, but the words jammed in my throat.

Achilles was staring.

I had not heard him shuffle or turn, so lost was I in my task. His eyes were bright green on mine, and there was a heaviness to his gaze, a languor in his breath I had not noticed in him before.

I swallowed. His eyes followed the bob of my throat. He had looked at me like this once before and the memory flushed hot in my cheeks.

“Achilles,” I said.

I did not recognize my own voice, but Achilles seemed to come back to himself and promptly fell back into the dirt. If I did not know him, I would have said he was hiding himself.

“It is nice weather today,” he said. It was an excuse, but I would let him have this.

* * *

Some things did not change on Pelion. The way I often woke before him, the way I savored the marvel of him coming back to the waking world, his face still soft from sleep. The way he woke me, if I had slept a bit too late, with his nose pressed against mine and his green eyes bright with mischief. He did this today, goading me awake, though my eyes were sandy and I did not feel as if I had slept through the night. “Patroclus,” he said, impatient.

His mother exerted a pressure upon me I could not escape, no matter how he made me forget my worries in the daytime. She stole hours away from me at night. And yet in spite of myself I could not deny him what he asked.

“A moment more, Achilles,” I mumbled. I was not the type to laze in bed, but the morning air stung my eyes and my limbs creaked like old wheels and the pallet was warm and smelled of Achilles and—

He pressed his face closer, and even in my drowsy state my heart sputtered. “Chiron said the river is thawed enough to swim,” he said, ever insistent. The excitement sparkled in his voice. “I would have you go with me.”

I shifted at this, squinting up at him from the pallet. “It is not yet warm,” I said. It was almost a complaint. Achilles did not seem to mind.

“The cold will wake you quicker,” he said. I could hear the grin in his words. He withdrew so that his golden arms boxed me in rather than pinned me to the pallet. A grumble escaped me and I pretended it was not from the loss of closeness.

“Patroclus,” he said. But it was different that time. I wrenched an eye open to humor him.

He had not gone far by any means but I still saw nothing but him. All but his face and the rose-pink walls of the cave were lost to me. The mischief had nearly drained from him, replaced by an intensity I did not often see on him without his bow or spear, and my eyes followed the perfect curves of his face and paused at his lips, slightly parted. That space captured me. Achilles shifted, and my eyes caught on the muscles of his chest, his rolling shoulders, the way his eyes flickered up from wherever they had been to meet mine.

I do not know how much time passed before he said, almost a whisper, “You did not sleep well.”

“No,” I said. The word rattled through me like wind in the brush. I watched him move above me, his weight falling elegantly to his shoulder as he lifted a finger to brush my cheek, just under the eye. As if he would drive away the pallor there through touch alone. I did not doubt that he could, if he wished it.

He held my gaze for many moments after that, searching. “A nightmare?”

 _It could be called that_. “No,” I said.

I was glad, then, that he did not pry, for he knew that I would tell him in due time. He leaned ever closer; I could almost feel his breath. “A swim will do you good, then,” he said. “At our usual spot. You will sleep soundly afterwards.” A pause. “If you like.”

As much as he wanted this, he still gave me a choice. As if one existed beneath the pressure of his eyes, pressing into me and tearing down my frustrations. Would there ever be enough words in the world to describe him? I closed my eyes against his splendor. “Give me a moment. I will come.”

The smile that broke from him then turned the hazy morning light into midday blazes. I remembered his eyes. Green flecked with gold. Then he was up and gone, light on his feet as he always was, the skins at the cave mouth whispering behind him in his rush to tell Chiron of our plans.

The cave seemed colder still without him there to warm me, but I did not linger on that. I swept a hand over my face to clear the fog as I lurched over to the basin. When at last I pushed aside the furs and breathed the fresh spring dew, I saw that the sun had climbed a bit higher than I anticipated. Achilles must have let me lie longer than I thought before waking me.

He was there in the clearing, kneeling by the remains of last night’s fire. At the sound of my breath he looked up from where he had been rolling nuts in the hot ashes to roast and grinned, showing off the basket of fruits and cheese he had gathered while I was still washing up.

“Patroclus,” he said, “look how the sun is high already. It will be warm enough for you.”

His certainty was almost like prophecy. The thought made me laugh; it would not surprise me if he had suddenly developed the ability.

He was right, in the end. The water was cool and sharp on my skin, but the spring sun was warm and still supple from winter and dulled the chill so that it did not cut as deep as I had thought. But it was moreso his joy, the brightness of his laughter when he pinned me to the mud and drenched me thoroughly before either of us had fully stripped, the pleasure he took in his leisurely swimming, the heat of his skin as he wrapped himself around my torso in an effort to pull me into the depths, that warded off the cold. I could not be cold when Achilles was near. If it was not his hands, their skin ever-warm and pulling me along, catching and pinning and playfully pushing, then it was his smile, wide and bright, which turned his whole face into sun. It was the way my name fit between his lips, his eyes soft with sympathy, as I pulled myself from the river after some time, when my restless night had finally caught up to me again.

I watched him now as he lounged in the current, both of us drowsy for different reasons. He had been especially restless this past winter and by the end of it he was so wound up I thought he might burst. In the end he had not, because he was Achilles and to burst did not suit him. But I had felt that he was on the brink of something, toeing a line I did not know; it was a blessing to see him like this, carefree, his green eyes simple and unguarded. Rejoicing in his playfulness after a pent-up winter and heavy snows.

The sun had passed its peak by the time Achilles emerged from the current himself. He sloughed dramatically onto the banks and grinned impishly when I laughed.

It was times like this I remembered his mother, the sea-nymph, and the golden blood within him, when he looked a god himself when the sun struck him just so. That ethereal stillness came over him now, the way it did in sleep, but his chest moved, still, breathing deep in the sweet new air. My eyes traced the grooves of his unmarred skin, the trails of water that ran through them. He was more than paints or sculpture could ever recreate. I wondered if the poets would ever capture the true novelty of him, his lyrical manner, the many different ways that light refracted within him. Or how his every move was like poetry itself.

As if he had heard me, his eyes fell to mine, and a shock ran through my stomach. There was not enough water in the world to cure my dry throat. “Let’s eat,” I said, and stood maybe too quickly. The basket was a little ways away, tucked into the coolest shade we could find, and I brought it to us. Achilles was pleased. The moment was forgotten.

Evening edged closer, and when we grew hungry again we wound along paths back to the clearing and the cave. Chiron had made fresh stew over the fire and we lay into it eagerly. It was not until Achilles, smiling, caught my spoon as it lazed away from my mouth that I realized I had dozed off. “Are you tired?” he said, his face spilling with mirth.

I looked down into the dredges of my stew and found it hard to focus. After that, I do not remember what I said, or how I made my way to the pallet, but the last thing I knew before sleep engulfed me was Achilles, his eyes warm and gentle and green as the new blooming leaves, and the warmth of his hand on mine.

“Patroclus,” he said warmly. Or maybe he had not. I slept.

* * *

The summer heat swelled around us, and Achilles was sixteen. The day had been bright with laughter, and then by the firelight he had tried on the cloak, his father’s gift, his sweeping gestures and commanding tone only half theatric and half a rehearsal. It scared me to see how well he wore it. But I could not wallow in my fears now when Achilles was so alive with pleasure, like a fire under his skin, dancing through a number of lively songs on freshly-tuned lyre strings. It would be a waste.

I would have stayed by the fire with him for an eternity that night, if Achilles had desired. I loved the way his joy shaped his face, how his smile-creased eyes would sparkle when he looked at me. But the time did come when I saw him stretch and yawn, and at Chiron’s amused suggestion, he retired into the cave. I kept a moment for myself to drink in his absence and the last embers of the fire before I followed, feeling warm at Chiron’s low rumbling farewell. He smiled when I returned it. Pale teeth, dark beard. I slipped into the cave.

Achilles was bent over the basin, but he turned when he heard my feet. “Patroclus,” he said, beaming. As he dried himself and started towards me, I realized I was grinning foolishly, crooked against my cheeks, but I could not stop it. He took my hands in his. “Patroclus,” he said again. “Thank you.”

I laughed. He always surprised me this way. “Why?”

“For today,” he said, squeezing my fingers. His hands were warm on mine.

“You have had more than this before,” I said. I thought of the palace, the extravagant gifts his father and his advisors would pile at his door, the boys who fell over themselves to offer him their finest. But Achilles shook his head.

“I have,” he said, “but none like this.”

I do not know if he felt the full weight of what he said. I looked at him. He looked back, green flecked with gold. There was a thickness in the space between us, and I was acutely aware of that distance. My will trembled. “That is good,” I said at last.

Achilles considered, his eyes unreadable. He wet his lips. He said, “Yes, it is good,” squeezed my fingers once more. His fire had died down a little, and he did not radiate with such intensity now; his smile was soft as he moved to sit on the bed. But he did not release me as I thought he might.

“Patroclus,” he said, “will you come to bed?”

The heat in my face came dizzyingly fast. Achilles must have known what those words could mean, and in my shock I could do nothing but stare, trying to read his face. But I could not see his intentions; perhaps I could not bear to see them. I remembered his mother, who had appeared in the clearing today and looked at me with a face so harsh I felt the sting even now. I pulled my hands away.

“I should wash,” I said. The words tumbled out of me. I turned quickly so that I did not have to face him and went to the basin, grateful for the cool shock against my hot skin, and let the sound of draining water clear my mind. When I returned to the pallet, Achilles had already settled, and apologetically found my gaze so that I could see he had forgiven me already. I slid in beside him, half grateful for his warmth and half swarmed with thoughts I could not think here, beside him.

I prepared for an awkwardness, but Achilles quickly filled the space with a joke he had thought of earlier. He kept pushing aside the weight that threatened to come over us as if nothing strange had happened. I did my best to return his enthusiasm, all the way until he drifted off at last, the last lines of another story still on his lips, and I waited, until I knew he was fully sleeping, before I turned to face him.

I often missed his vibrancy while he was asleep, but it was also a time where I could look without fear of being discovered (though he caught me often enough as it is). If his mother saw, I did not care. Even Thetis could not say he was not a joy to look at.

She had denied me this, before—the gift of proximity, and the way the graceful curve of his neck and steady breath would slow my thoughts and, eventually, pull me to sleep. I knew she would deny it again if I was not careful. And it was not so hard to keep these things to myself. I feared the worst, and if it was necessary so that I could still be by his side, and still see his smile brighten the air, it would be no trouble at all.

In a perfect world, one where nothing else mattered, I do not know if things would be different. It was lucky that I could never find enough words to describe him. If I knew them, he would know. I would tell him over and over.


End file.
